THE NAVY.
MR. SAMBOURNE, in Punch, lately gave us a very spirited picture of the auction-room of Europe. The command of the sea was being put up for sale, and the nations were bidding against each other for that in- estimable possession. France had just made a new bid of £8,000,000 ; but John Bull, though evidently annoyed at being raised in that fashion, was doggedly saying " Guineas." There is the whole situation in a nutshell. The command of the sea is literally, and not metaphori- cally, up for sale, and will fall to the highest bidder,—or it may be bidders, for in this case two of the Powers may lump their forces and buy on a joint account. Now the question for Englishmen to decide is whether it is worth their while to bur the command of the sea by the only way in which it is purchasable. That way is to build more and faster ships, and to spend more money on England's naval preparations than any other Power or Powers in combination. In the long run no other plan for getting the command of the sea will avail. England may possess a great naval tradition, and, as Captain Mahan declares in his interview with the Daily Chronicle correspondent in Tuesday's issue, may have very fine sailors and very capable officers, but in the end it comes back to a question of battleships and cruisers. No amount of courage or skill will make up for the want of ironclads, at any rate when your competitors are such brave and warlike peoples as the French and the Russians. Practically you have to consider that ships of equal size are equal in power whether in English or in French or Russian hands. But this means that the stronger navy will win, and that you cannot feel even reasonably sure of beating a fleet of five battleships and eight cruisers unless you have at least seven battleships and ten cruisers. Captain Mahan, while speaking most warmly of our ships and officers, admitted the truth of this fact in the course of his interview. He clearly thinks that the preponderance depends on the number of battleships. In other words, the nation which has most battleships will win. It comes back to this, then, that if England wants to gain and keep the command of the sea, she must buy it by building a fleet which will outnumber the fleet of any possible antagonists.
But to do this is of course a very great sacrifice. It is no good disguising the fact that the expenditure of vast sums of money on the Fleet during the next ten or twelve years—we need not look beyond that—will per se be a national evil. However rich a, country may be, it is an evil to raise vast sums by taxation. It is therefore per- fectly right and proper to consider whether the command of the sea may not be bought too dear,—whether the price may not be run up beyond the point at which it is possible to purchase. To answer the question whether the command of the sea is worth buying at a very high figure, it is necessary to consider what would be the position of England if she did not possess the command of the sea. If the command of the sea were in the hands, say, of France alone, or France and Russia combined, six things would happen, even if we still had a reasonably strong fleet in our home waters :—(l) Our commercial navy would have to be transferred to foreign flags or else be put in jeopardy by hostile cruisers. (2) Our garrisons in India and Egypt could not be reinforced. (3) Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, and all other ports and coaling-stations in islands which could not provide food for themselves would have to be abandoned. (4) Our Colonies would be liable not merely to raids by cruisers, but to conquest by military expeditions despatched against them for that purpose. (5) Our food supplies would be imperilled, if not actually stopped. (6) Our coasts would be liable, not perhaps to invasion as long as our " moderately strong " Fleet remained in existence, but, at any rate, to the surprise visits of small squadrons. That is no fancy picture, 'ut. a very moderate catalogue of some of the results of war between England and a Power or Powers who possessed the command of the sea. But an item remains to be added. If the Power with the stronger navy—i.e., with the command of the sea—ultimately used it to crush our "moderately strong" Navy, the country must either make peace instantly or be exposed to the horrors of invasion. But the plain English of all this is that if we are to remain a great nation we must buy the command of the sea at whatever cost. That is, we must never see either France or Russia or Germany add to their fleets without at once making to our own not an equivalent but a greater addition. We must always bid higher than any one else. The process may be, and no doubt is, very ex- pensive ; but at least it is cheaper than an unsuccessful war,—there is no extravagance equal to that. Now comes the question, If we are to keep ahead in the bidding, is it better to do so by means of small in- crements, and by saying guineas to pounds, or by large and bold bids ? We ourselves incline to the latter,—and for this reason. The small rises in the bidding have the effect of tempting and inciting our competitors to go on. If we only raise the bidding by shillings, so to speak, they are inclined to think that we are getting tired of the game. Just one more effort,' they argue, and poor old John Bull will throw up the sponge in despair.' If, how- ever, we were to raise the bidding by a great lump-sum it is by no means improbable that we should convince our competitors that we really mean to keep command of the sea, and that therefore they need not attempt to beat us. And remember that the auction-room of Europe differs in one very important respect from a private auction-room. At the auction where the command of the sea is sold the bids have to be paid and spent immediately they are made, or else they do not count. Hence there is far more ground for not following a high bid than when to follow a high bid merely means a certain waste of breath. To follow a bid of many millions, and then to add another million, is a ticklish matter when the millions will have to be paid, and ve "wimps have no effect, because they will only make England add yet another ten millions. For this reason we have always favoured the plan of making our Navy supreme in face of foreign competition by raising a very large loan to be expended, say in five years, in building additions to the Fleet, and in so creating a Navy in regard to whose supremacy there should be no possible question. For example, we would now raise a loan of £50,000,000 — the money could be got for about 2; per cent.—and allow the Admiralty during the next five years to employ these millions, or as much of them as they could profitably use, in building in their own and in private yards an extra fleet of the fastest and best battleships and cruisers that our builders could design. To begin with, no doubt, there would be difficulty in getting sufficient plates and machinery, but by the end of the five years we should have a Fleet that would settle the question of the command of the sea. Not all the millions would go in shipbuilding. Some of them would be used in en- listing and training crews in readiness for the extra ships when they were built. These, however, are details into which it is not necessary to enter now. Our immediate point is that if France saw that we had actually raised and were spending £50,000,000 extra to increase our Fleet, she would conclude that it was not worth while to compete with us, and would decide instead to keep her extra money for her army. She would not, of course, give up maintaining a strong fleet, but she would not, we believe, continue the feverish competition with us in which she is now engaged. Her statesmen would realise that if she continued the competition and followed our lead in a big bid, one of two things must ultimately happen. Either she must neglect her army or else go bankrupt. But no French statesman dares neglect the army while the enemy is on the frontier ; and, again, French statesmen are beginning to see that even France does not possess a lucky-bag, which never refuses to yield gold. We may, then, feel a reasonable assurance that if we show France that we are determined not to be beaten in the competition, and will spend our last shilling on our Fleet, she will in effect withdraw from the contest. But it may be asked what will happen if France shows herself equally stubborn. The answer is, France knows that she must spend her last shilling not on her navy but on her army. In the present case, then, if we make it clear that it has come to a ques- tion of last shillings, it is France, not we, that must give way.
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